


Hurricane

by capgal



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 12:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5163056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capgal/pseuds/capgal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night Steve gives up, there is a hurricane warning across the entire eastern seaboard.</p><p>His search has taken him across nearly the entire globe, only to end back on American soil. He stands on the banks of the Potomac, exactly where the helicarriers went down, no wiser than he was eight months ago; he might as well have gone sightseeing around the world for all the progress he’s made. The building storm seems to wash away the last of his resolve with its downpour, and he finally lets himself be cajoled into returning to New York.</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Or, the "come in from the rain" fic that was clearly necessary.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurricane

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beardysteve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beardysteve/gifts).



> Happy birthday Lucii! Sorry it's late.

The night Steve gives up, there is a hurricane warning across the entire eastern seaboard.

His search has taken him across nearly the entire globe—weaving through vast expanses of eastern Europe, dipping briefly into north-eastern Africa, and plane-hopping back and forth across Asia before climbing up along the western coast of South America through the peaks of the Andes—only to end back on American soil. He stands on the banks of the Potomac, exactly where the helicarriers went down, no wiser than he was eight months ago; he might as well have gone sightseeing around the world for all the progress he’s made. He refuses his teammates’ pleas to come back for a few weeks on principle, unwilling to admit defeat, and wanders aimless along the streets of Washington hoping for a glimpse of metal, a flash of a red star. But the storm seems to wash away the last of his resolve with its downpour—the way he should have washed away with the Arctic ice, with the flow of the Potomac—and he finally lets himself be cajoled into returning to New York. When he turns his back on the grave in Arlington for the last time, it is as empty as it always has been; he has found neither body nor ghost to bury. He resists the momentary urge to crawl into it himself, to fill the void with his own bones. _Not yet._

Thor offers to hold back the fury of the storm until he arrives, but Steve declines; it feels oddly appropriate to trudge with his head ducked under the pressure of the pouring rain, drenched to his bones. It feels like condemnation and rage and grief rolled into one, and he lets the roar of the thunder swallow the scream breaking from his throat. Besides, the rainwater provides a convenient cover for the wetness on his cheeks.

It’s well past four in the morning when he finally drags his feet into the tower, trailed by a streak of mud that stains the floor with the mark of his failure. They’re all waiting up in the common room when he walks in, even Fury. He can see sympathy in their eyes, can see condolences and sorrow and pity, and he has to turn his eyes away. This is not the European front in 1943, and there is no ragged army at his side nor victory in his march home this time. This homecoming crowd feels claustrophobic, feels undeserved, and he mumbles some excuse about exhaustion and cold as he slinks away to his room. They let him go without argument, so he figures he must look as terrible as he feels. Now that he is back in New York, back where his mind automatically thinks _home_ , all the exhaustion of eight months ceaseless on the road is crashing down on him at once, and he can feel his muscles drooping as he walks. It doesn’t stop him from feeling their eyes on his back all the way to the elevator.

He will face them tomorrow, he promises himself. Tonight—tonight, he does not have the strength.

He can’t say what makes him pause halfway out of the elevator, one foot still inside. Maybe it’s just pure exhaustion making him paranoid, or the strange sensation of familiarity turned novel as he steps onto his floor for the first time in nearly a year. Or maybe it’s some small noise, some miniscule fluttering of the air—minute enough that even his super-senses can’t quite identify it, but significant enough to trigger some deep-seated instinct. Whatever the reason, he finds himself caught between the elevator doors, listening with held breath. Only the sound of his heartbeat echoes in the dark space, however, and he shakes his head and chalks it up to battle-weary nerves.

It isn’t until he pads out of the bathroom, one hand raking through his wet hair, that he freezes again. The darkness in his bedroom is enough to obscure most colours and shapes—he hasn’t bothered turning on the lights—but it can’t hide the gleam of New York skylights reflecting off metal plates. Besides, Steve’s been straining his eyes so long for this shape, for this gleam, that he thinks he would recognize it in his sleep.

“Bucky?”

The name jumps off his tongue, just as involuntary and shocked as the first time. He stares for a long moment, refusing to blink, in case he is hallucinating and the shape of Bucky in the corner melts back into vague shadows. The darkness is silent for so long, without even the low hiss of expanding lungs, that Steve begins to wonder if he has finally gone crazy and started seeing ghosts out of sheer desperation. It doesn’t even seem all that implausible; he’s seen much stranger things in the few years he’s been awake in this world. Hallucinating his brainwashed assassin of a best friend wouldn’t even make the top twenty. Just as he’s about to reach out and grasp at the shadowy silhouette to confirm his suspicions, a rough voice vibrates in the air.

“I didn’t— I didn’t know where to go.”

The words come out like the scratch of a record. Bucky sounds ravaged, like he’s been screaming for hours—or like he’s still learning to use his voice again after decades of silence. It’s the sweetest sound Steve’s ever heard. It occurs to him that perhaps he should be concerned how Bucky managed to sneak into his room—his 52nd-floor Stark-secured SHIELD-watched Avengers Tower room—but mostly he’s busy trying not to fall to the ground on knees that suddenly feel far too shaky to hold up his body. He considers stepping closer to Bucky, but he doesn’t want to spook him; he can practically feel the tension rolling off of Bucky in crashing waves, and he feels like something might shatter if he so much as breathes too hard. He’s not even sure his feet will carry him that far.

“That’s—I’m glad. I’m glad you’re here, Bucky. You can always come here.” His own voice sounds strange to him, although he’s not sure if that’s because his throat feels like it’s squeezing too tight for words to push through, or because his ears are straining too hard for the slightest sound from the other side of the room. His fingers fidget by his side, torn between the longing to finally hold Bucky and the terrified certainty that Bucky will disappear if he tries. A part of him still isn’t quite convinced this is real, that he didn’t just fall asleep on his feet on the elevator and dream up the shadowy figure. Or maybe he was captured by some enemy force along the way, and this is their idea of torture. (If it is, then he has to admit it's effective.) Or maybe he died, and this is Heaven—but in his Heaven, Bucky would be happy, not this broken shadow of himself. So maybe this is his Hell, and he's being punished for all the lives he took, for failing to save Bucky, for failing to die on that plane like he should have. Or maybe this is just some cruel, elaborate prank. Or maybe—

“I’m not him.”

The words splinter his thoughts to pieces, and his every sense fixes again on the far corner of the room. Steve chokes on the first words that rise to his lips like lblood from a gut wound— _yes, yes you are, whatever they did you to you’re still my best friend and the man I love_ —and swallows them back down. That isn’t what Bucky needs right now. He hesitates for a few heartbeats before finally settling on a simple, “okay.”

“It doesn’t matter to me,” he adds cautiously, when the one word seems to hang inadequate and incomplete in the yawning space between them. “I don’t need him back. I just—I just want you to be safe. And happy, whatever that means to you.” It twists a knife somewhere deep in his gut, feels like letting go of his last fraying ties to the man he was and the time he belonged in, but it’s worth every twinge of pain if it means Bucky will stay. Steve waits, lets the words tumble in the air and settle like dust motes. He waits for Bucky to make his decision, his heart beating a fast staccato against the cage of his ribs.

“I almost killed you.”

The words are whispered this time, so soft and so tremulous that Steve almost misses them in the rush of blood in his ears. He’s still trying to figure out a better response than _I don’t care_ when Bucky speaks again. “I don’t— I shouldn’t—"

Steve sees Bucky twist to leave, to climb back out of whatever crevice he slipped in through, and he finally gives into the pounding urge to reach for his friend. “Please,” he begs, the plea on his lips before he can even think to restrain himself. “It’s—it’s cold and wet outside. Just stay the night. You can—you can go in the morning if you really want to then, just please stay for the night.” The thought of having Bucky here for a moment only to lose him again in the morning almost tears him in two, but it’s better than the thought of Bucky wandering out in the harsh lonely streets of New York with a hurricane crashing over them. Bucky stops, almost as if caged by the words, and turns wide-desperate-pleading-confused-lost eyes on him. Steve steps back with his hands raised, trying to be as non-threatening as he can make himself, and hopes he can convince Bucky with the sheer gaze of his eyes. “ _Please,_ ” he tries again, ready to fall to his knees and beg if it would help. Slowly, so slowly, Bucky turns the rest of his body around to face Steve. He approaches cautiously, walking more like a man to a scaffold than someone looking for a dry place to sleep for a night. Steve finally gets a clear look at Bucky as the light outside the window illuminates him in a thousand small shards, and it’s all he can do to stifle a gasp. Bucky looks _terrible_ , with caked-blood gashes along his forehead, his cheeks, his forearms, with clothes so worn they’re fraying at every surface, with a frame so shrunken he looks like he’s been starved for _months_. He’s still fighting off the shock when Bucky finally lowers himself onto the floor by the foot of the bed, ramrod-straight and stiff as a slab of stone. Almost like a corpse in a coffin— _or a man in a cryo pod,_ Steve realizes with a wave of revulsion.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his careful word selection thrown by the surge of anger, of horror, of grief pulsing in his blood. Bucky somehow tenses even more, almost like he’s preparing for a blow. “You— you told me to stay,” he chokes out, eyes pressed tightly closed as if he can’t bear to see what’s happening next.

“I meant in bed. Not—not on the floor.” _You’re not some dog,_ Steve thinks, but he’s wise enough not to speak those words this time. Bucky sits up a bit, just enough to fix puzzled eyes on his face. “But it’s your bed,” he says, as if it is a universal Truth-with-a-capital-T. As if it is a perfectly logical choice to make Bucky sleep on the bare floor while Steve lounges comfortable on the king-sized bed, and Steve is breaking the laws of the universe by failing to agree.

“It’s big enough for two, I promise. Tony’s really big on the luxury. Wait, unless you don’t want to me to be in bed with you. Of course you wouldn’t want that. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have presumed—I can sleep on the couch, it’s okay, I don’t mind. The bed’s yours. I want you to be comfortable.” Steve’s vaguely aware that he’s rambling, that he shouldn’t be saying half the words that are bubbling out of his chest, but he can’t stop. Bucky is still lying on the floor like he doesn’t know he can even touch the bed and Steve thinks he might cry if he stops talking.

“You can stay,” Bucky says, cutting off Steve’s rushing stream of words like a TV on mute. Steve continues to gape for a second or two more before clicking his mouth shut. He watches, a little cautious and a lot worried, as Bucky peels himself off the floor and lays on the bed. His position doesn’t look all that much more comfortable; he’s still just as tense, just as stiff and unnaturally still, but at least he’s on the bed. Steve suspects pushing for more will just scare and confuse Bucky even more, so he heaves a sigh and lowers himself on the bed next to Bucky instead. The momentary urge to twine their fingers makes his hand twitch, but he draws it close to himself and clutches his own fingers together instead.

“G'night,” he says to the ceiling. He’s halfway asleep despite the tension still vibrating in the room when Bucky answers, “G'night.” And even though it’s just a word, even though Bucky’s still far from _back_ , it’s still the sweetest lullaby Steve’s heard since he woke up to that baseball game in that phony room years ago.


End file.
